Supertown plan floated to revive bush

Small towns such as Moora, Jurien Bay, Collie, Katanning and Mt Barker would be turned into thriving "supertowns" where tens of thousands of residents enjoyed city-standard facilities under a State Government plan which would relieve pressure on Perth.

Nationals leader Brendon Grylls will today outline a major shift in the way cash from the Royalties for Regions fund is spent, with the new policy to form an important part of his party's bid to win more seats at the next State poll due next year.

Mr Grylls will tell policy think tank the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia that a number of smaller towns throughout the southern half of WA will be showered with new facilities and government services which will be comparable to those available in Perth and bigger regional centres.

"We have tentatively called this policy 'Supertowns' and we are looking at places like Collie, Jurien, Manjimup, Mt Barker, Merredin, Katanning and Moora," he said yesterday.

Mr Grylls said the Pilbara Cities policy, which the State Government believes will enable Port Hedland and Karratha to evolve into modern cities, would be adapted to other towns.

Government investment in key services and infrastructure would be used as a carrot to lure private business.

"Kalgoorlie, Albany, Geraldton and Bunbury are already thriving cities in their own right but there are a lot of towns just under them, the Collies, the Jurien Bays, the Northams, and places like that, which, if you look at those sorts of towns in the eastern States, are 20,000 or 30,000 population towns," he said.

"In WA we just don't have that.

"What I don't think has ever happened (by Government) is that there has never been enough money to say 'right, we are going to do the lot, we are going to make sure that we have got the school at the level that people expect, we are going to make sure that we have got the hospital at a certain level'."

Mr Grylls said improving social amenities in the towns, from making streetscapes more attractive to increasing the number of dining-out options, was another important step.

"If you can't buy a cup of coffee it is going to be pretty difficult to convince someone that they want to live there," he said.

Mr Grylls said economic projects like the $3.5 billion urea plant planned for Collie, intensive horticulture in Moora and the $165 million immigration detention centre in Northam were not enough by themselves to draw in and retain residents.